"BE KIND, REWIND"
Starring Jack Black, Mos Def,
Danny Glover, Mia Farrow
Released: Feb. 22, 2008

WATCH THE TRAILER

Not fantastic, but it's entertaining enough. If nothing else, see it just for the hilarious remakes.

IN AN AGE when DVDs and the Internet have rendered VHS tapes almost archaic, there is the Be Kind Rewind video rental store in Passaic, N.J., the supposed birthplace of a locally famous jazz musician named Fatts Waller. Business isn’t really terrible, but it’s not great either.

The store’s owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), goes on a trip and leaves the store in charge of his son Mike (Mos Def) and, unknowingly and unfortunately, Mike’s friend Jerry (Jack Black).

Jerry lives in a trailer next to a power plant, and he is convinced that it is causing his perpetual headaches and ruining everyone's lives. He gets the brilliant idea to sabotage the power plant, and in the process gets electrocuted and, of course, most logically, his entire body becomes magnetized.

Jerry’s accident leaves him a little discombobulated, and he sort of drunkenly stumbles through the video store, knocking all the videos off the shelf, picking them all up again, consequently erasing every tape.

In order to satisfy the store’s one really loyal customer, an elderly lady (Mia Farrow) who has sort of lost touch with reality, Mike and Jerry take on the task of remaking the movies that were erased. In doing so, they become local celebrities.

The idea of this movie attracted me from the moment I heard of it, several months ago. My dad was watching this odd-sounding video on his computer in which Jack Black was wearing a dress and singing a demented version of the “Ghostbusters” theme song.

I happen to be a huge fan of the ridiculous storyline and hilariously substandard special effects of “Ghostbusters,” so I was highly intrigued.

I discovered that it was the trailer for “Be Kind Rewind,” in which two guys remake a host of “classic” movies and become big neighborhood stars. I immediately vowed to see it as soon as it came out in theaters.

The script was no “Juno,” and the film was plagued with a weak storyline, but it had me laughing all the way through.

Jack Black and Mos Def are perfectly hilarious in their imitations of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Martin Lawrence, Mufasa, Scar, Peter Weller, George Foreman, Muhammad Ali, and numerous others whose most famous roles were reenacted.

I didn’t have any particular objections to the acting in the film, but you could say that Jack Black seems to have only one type of character he can portray. Jerry reminded me very much of Dewey from “School of Rock.” Otherwise, the acting is fantastic, and it’s probably the movie’s best feature.

A fairly significant backstory for the movie is that a fairly popular deceased jazz musician, Fatts Waller, had supposedly been born in the building where the video store is housed. While this subplot is necessary for how the movie ends, its role in the rest of the story is not well established.

Bits and pieces about the musician are just sort of randomly thrown in throughout the film, and make it a little confusing. Everything makes sense in the end, but for a first-time viewer, the moment when it all comes together comes a little too late in the story.

A couple other parts of the plot were a little sketchy, like the reason that Jerry decides to sabotage the power plant. It’s not really established what his connection to the plant is, other than that his trailer is parked right near it. You’d think he could find another place to park his trailer if he hated the plant so much. The police are also often visiting his trailer to bother him, so you get the feeling that he might be some sort of nuclear activist.

What made “Be Kind Rewind” particularly entertaining were the “special effects.” There weren’t very many, so those that were there looked very much out of place.

They were a bit reminiscent of those found in “Ghostbusters,” which is heavily referenced and is the first film Mike and Jerry remake, so this is probably the effect they were going for. I think that if they really wanted to go for the “Ghostbusters” look, however, they could have added a few more effects to make the necessary ones look less out of place.

All in all, I liked this movie. It is by no means an award-winning masterpiece, but it’s one of those films you can watch and be at least mildly entertained by.

With the plot, it’s as good as I expected it to be, so I was not disappointed. Warm, realistic lighting and easy-going humor make “Be Kind Rewind” a nice feel-good movie to watch on a rainy day.

If you don’t have time to see the movie, the Web site is extremely well done and includes parts of all of the remade movies.

“Be Kind Rewind” is currently playing at the Goodrich Savoy 16, 232 W. Burwash, Savoy, and the Beverly 18, 910 Meijers Drive, Champaign.

“BE KIND REWIND” AT A GLANCE

• Starring: Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow
• Directed & written by: Michel Gondry
• Genre: Comedy, Sci-Fi
• Rated: PG-13
• Runtime: 101 min.
• Release date: Feb. 22, 2008
• Summary: When Jack Black’s magnetized brain accidentally erases all of the tapes in his friend’s video store, they have to remake such classic movies as “Ghostbusters,” “Robocop,” and “Rush Hour 2.”
• External sites: IMDb entry, official site